So between three guys, two days, and twenty sheets of drywall, there are still gaps in the walls in the bathroom. I knew I wasn’t hiring the A-Team here, but the lackadaisical approach to, um, completing the job has been a bit frustrating. They’ve got the majority of it hung, and there’s tape on half of it so far, but I had to have them remove one panel because they screwed it in over an outlet box. As long as I stay on top of them, things should turn out alright.
In the meantime, I’m waffling about what I should do with my old MacBook Pro. Originally I was going to sell it, but the pictures I took for Craigslist disappeared off my camera. At that point I thought about installing Plex and making it into a media server, but talking it over with a friend made me realize I couldn’t hook it up to our shitty TV if I wanted to. So now I may go back to Craigslist and see if I can get $500 for it.
Wow, fascinating reading: Paul Haggis Vs. the Church of Scientology, via the New Yorker.
Saturday morning, we drove over a very foggy Bay Bridge to Easton to visit the Morrises and celebrate a first birthday. We all had an excellent time catching up and watching the kids play, and it was with sadness that we loaded up and headed home well beyond Finn’s naptime.
On Sunday, the house was filled with the sound of clomping boots as three talkative men began hanging drywall in the den. The majority of the ceiling is done, and they’re working their way around to the bathroom. I’m hoping that by the time I get home tonight everything will be hung and the first coat of tape and mud will be in place.
I did some sleuthing and found a tile manufacturer who makes hexagonal tile with no bullnose (the tile is completely flat, like it would have been 100 years ago). Their closest distributor is down in Federal Hill, so I’m going to see what 30 sq. feet of it would cost. Jen is seeing beadboard in that bathroom, which would go very well with old-style tile. The big question will be whether 1″ or 2″ tile is the right size and scale for the space.
Walking into work today, I had a sudden ache of loneliness for my girls and thought of our trip to the beach together. It just about brought me to my knees. As God as my witness, we are going back this year.
For some reason, Finn woke up repeatedly last night, about every half hour, just as I’d warm up under the blankets and start drifting off to sleep. At 2AM gave up, dragged my pillow in, laid down on the spare bed in her room, and we finally fell asleep. This morning feels like I’m wading through butter, both mentally and physically.
Tomorrow we’re driving across the bridge for a birthday party with good friends, which will be great fun, and Sunday the drywall guy is scheduled to start on the side porch.
Dear GOP: I have a daughter. Go fuck yourselves. House Republicans Drop “Forcible Rape” Language from Bill on Abortion
I’m listening to Dinosaur Jr.’s Farm, which is not exactly the best music for working (unless you’re in a hurry, like me). Green Mind was one of my cornerstone albums of the 90’s, and after a love-hate relationship with their later catalog, I’ve come back to their newer work. My ears have never recovered from the show I saw at Hammerjacks in ’95, but it’s good to hear them again.
I navigated the slippery streets and alleys of Hampden the other day to pick this up from a co-worker who is moving out of town. It’s a Sears XCargo 50, which will extend the liveable space in the CR-V tremendously when we travel. (20 cubic feet? Hell yes.) I have to pick up a set of cargo bars to mount it on, but I found a Thule kit that will fit the rails we have for about $200 without all of the special feet/attachment/lock foolishness.
This is a riveting, heartbreaking bit of photojournalism: The Julie Project by Darcy Padilla follows a homeless 18-year-old with a newborn baby all the way from 1993 to the present day in pictures and words. I will go home and hug my daughter very tightly tonight.
Bright and early Saturday morning, I had 15 sheets of 1/2″ delivered by a nice guy with a forklift, and managed to hump all of them inside to the front porch before the snow really started falling. There was, however, no word from the drywall guy, who didn’t return a phone message on Saturday and never showed Sunday; such is the way of discount contractors. And thus, the drywall sits. The side room is ready for him whenever he wakes up, though—the insulation is cleaned up and debris cleared out, awaiting the clomp-clomp of drywall stilts. On Friday, Mr. Scout worked upstairs tacking in ceiling insulation to try and retain some of the heat, which seems to have made a difference throughout both floors. I’m going to tuck more in between the sash pockets and small cracks to see if that does anything else when I get a little time this week.
Back to Saturday. Mama is fighting a case of strep throat, so I wrangled Finn as much as I could over the weekend to let her rest up. Before lunch, Finn and I took a trip up to Lakeshore Learning, which is sort of a Target for teachers, to buy birthday presents for some friends. This was my first time there but she’s been before, and made an immediate beeline to the squishy erasers, amid an entire store full of sensory overload. After tearing her away and browsing the aisles a few times, we joined a group of kids doing crafts at a table up front and made a snow igloo (which, strangely, includes googly eyes, sparkly red stripes, and fuzzy pop-poms). Here is where I brag on my daughter, who walked up to the table and asked the woman in a confident sing-song voice if she could play too, then politely shared with the other children and said thank you when we were done. (She bent down, picked up a stray googly eye, and handed it to the boy next to her, with a cheerful “here you go, guys!”) Other parents sort of stared at us as we walked away, which made me wonder if they taught their kids manners too. From what I saw, not so much.
Sunday afternoon I chaperoned her to our neighbor’s second birthday party. She dove right in to the fray (about 15 kids of varying ages, from 1.5 to about 7) and did really well on her own with one early exception: Wading into the chaotic living room while I was caught in the middle of a conversation, she suddenly realized she didn’t know where her daddy was and had a slight freakout. I heard the timbre of her voice rising and zoomed in, scooped her up, and talked her down off the ledge. Once she understood I would stay in visual range, I set her down to explore on her own for the rest of the party, making sure she knew where I was. About two hours after cupcakes we finally hit sweaty meltdown, but a two-house walk home on my shoulders was gravy compared to Saturday’s car ride, when I pushed her right up against the edge of naptime and paid the price the whole car ride home.
There are days when I feel like I’m just making this up as I go along, but the days like Sunday, when I can walk into a party full of kids and candy and noise and people and still read her face from across the room and know when she needs a hug or a juice or when it’s time to bail—those are the days that I feel like I’m doing OK.
And there is no better sound in the world than the sound of her laughter.